WWALS Watershed Coalition advocates for conservation and stewardship of the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, Little, and Suwannee River watersheds in south Georgia and north Florida through education, awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen activities.

Desperately seeking loopholes, at 4:58 PM today on a Friday,
Sabal Trail claimed “Applicants would face irreparable financial harm,”
which is pretty rich for the company that stuck the Bell Brothers with
$47,000 in Sabal Trail legal fees
for fighting eminent domain from that same FERC certificate
the DC Circuit Court is likely to void next week.

It wants to “avoid the irreparable impacts of a system shutdown,”
says the company that destroyed world-record-holding
soybean farmer Randy Dowdy’s soybean fields.
As Randy Dowdy said last May, and Sabal Trail’s own reports then say
they have done nothing to correct:

“We’ve got loss of production for the future that will take
not my lifetime, Continue reading →

Especially scared of Sierra Club’s DC Circuit Court win against FERC and Sabal Trail.
He said the “sea change” in sophistication of the opposition reminded him
of the No Nukes movement of the 1970s and 1980s.
Maybe he forgets: we won!
And solar and wind power are already winning against pipelines.

There has been a “sea change in the identity, volume and goals of
stakeholders participating in our proceedings, as well as in the
nature and tone of the rhetoric of those who oppose pipeline
projects.”

Hahira, Georgia, November 21, 2017 —
Factually incorrect, failing to account for LNG export or solar power, and irresponsible for not finding or creating a method for attributing environmental effects to greenhouse gases, as the DC Circuit Court had instructed
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to do:
that’s what nine Riverkeepers called FERC’s Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) yesterday; see their letter to FERC.
The nine include all the Riverkeepers in the path of Sabal Trail and all parts of the Southeast Market Pipelines Project (SMPP) plus others in all three states invaded by those pipelines, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, plus Oklahoma, where the SMPP instigator,
Florida Power & Light (FPL), owns a fracking field,
The nine, who support fishable, swimmable, drinkable water,
pointed out that all of FPL’s original excuses for Sabal Trail have been
proven incorrect, and asked FERC to shut it down.

Asked why a pipeline dispatcher apparently told the fire department
that “this was a new system and they are still
learning,” Grover responds that “it would be illogical
to speculate as to what the fire department has quoted as part of a
conversation.”

Or are those just Pinocchio donkey ears?
That would be more logical.

Who do you believe?
A local county fire department, or someone paid by a pipeline company
to put the best face on any event?
Especially when she didn’t actually deny anything Marion County Fire Rescue reported?

The Sabal Trail Pipeline, a new natural gas pipeline that critics
have charged is uncomfortably close to Florida’s main aquifer,
“operated safely throughout Hurricane Irma,” a
spokesperson with the pipeline operator tells ConsumerAffairs.

“We were and continue to be able to meet any customer
needs,” says an email from Andrea Grover of Enbridge Energy,
the natural gas company behind the Sabal Trail Pipeline.
“Operations was not affected by the hurricane impacts.”

Andrea Grover’s linkedin page
lists her as
“Director, Stakeholder Outreach at Enbridge (Oil & Gas)”.
For four years we were told the pipeline’s “stakeholders”
were landowners along the way.

But is Sabal Trail even serving those customers well?
Cody Suggs reported yesterday from the Hildreth Compressor Station site
near O’Brien, in Suwannee County, Florida, that power is still off there
and it took two days for trees to be cleared off the access road.

Natural gas began flowing through the Sabal Trail Pipeline in June
2017. People like John Quarterman, a Georgia landowner and activist
with WWALS Watershed Coalition, a group that aims to protect
watersheds in Georgia and Florida, say that federal regulators are
typically asleep at the wheel for these projects.

“We have this 500-mile improvised explosive device, under our
rivers, next to our schools and next to people’s houses and nobody
is handling pipeline safety,” he tells ConsumerAffairs.

Florida’s landscape is characterized by
karst terrain, or land made of porous limestone, caverns, and water
dissolving into the bedrock, all of which are a recipe for
sinkholes. Man-made infrastructure can increase the chance of a
sinkhole forming, and so can intense rain.

“Man-induced sinkholes typically involve collapse of old mine
workings, drainage infrastructure or other underground
workings,” explained meteorologist Jim Andrews in one recent
report. “Naturally, such can fail over time, and rainfall can
be a major factor.”

In fact, at least four homes have been evacuated in central Florida
this week after sinkholes formed in the wake of Hurricane Irma,
according to reporters on the scene. Still, Enbridge Energy says
that their pipeline can handle sinkhole-prone terrain.

“While opposition has raised the issue of the pipeline being
constructed in karst terrain, this was thoroughly examined by the
appropriate federal and state agencies,” responds Enbridge
representative Andrea Grover by email. “They concluded it was
unlikely that Sabal Trail would impact springs or the Floridan
Aquifer in the karst regions. Sabal Trail is well equipped to safely
construct and operate the pipeline in karst areas.”

Violations Sabal Trail and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP)
told us would not happen,
under oath in WWALS vs. Sabal Trail & FDEP (October 2015),
have already been happening.

But Quarterman says he does not trust the company to voluntarily
report any issues that may arise. Activists with his group who live
along the pipeline route have been tracking the project themselves,
both before and after Hurricane Irma, to make sure no leaks,
sinkholes underneath the pipeline, or any other issues have
occurred.

To see Sabal Fail in inaction at Dunnellon,
jump to The Dunnellon odorant leaks,
where the pipeline stooges wrapped it in towels, sprayed a deodorant, and waited until morning.
Really, according to the incident report from Marion County Fire Rescue.
It doesn’t get better in this summary: none of the state or federal
permitting or safety agencies did anything, leaving Marion County
to deal with the situation unassisted.

“Once the court officially returns the matter to FERC, the
pipeline should cease operations while FERC undertakes the new
analysis,” wrote Elly Benson, lead
attorney for the case Sierra Club just won against Sabal Trail.

She summed up: ”Instead of sacrificing our communities and
environment to build unnecessary pipelines that “set up
surefire profits” for pipeline companies at the expense of
captive ratepayers, the focus should be on transitioning to clean
renewable energy and energy efficiency—especially in the
Sunshine State. Forcing federal agencies to grapple with the true
climate impacts of dirty fossil fuel projects is a big step in the
right direction.”

She leads off this fourth in a WWALS news roundup series
(1,
2,
3) about that case, followed by Gordon
Rogers, Flint Riverkeeper, another party to the case.

WWALS is not a party to that case and does not speak for the
parties, so I can be a cheerleader for them. Shut it down! Let the sun rise!